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The Ring (2002 film)
The Ring is a 2002 American supernatural psychological horror film directed by Gore Verbinski and starring Naomi Watts. It is a remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film Ring, which was based on the novel Ring by Kôji Suzuki (who also helped co-write both film versions). The Ring was released in theaters on October 18, 2002 and received critical acclaim with critics praising the reliance on dread and visuals over gore and the direction along with the screenplay writing but criticizing the character development. The film also grossed over $249 million on a $48 million production budget making it one of the highest grossing horror films of all time. The Ring was soon followed by a sequel titled The Ring Two three years later. It will be followed by another sequel titled Rings in 2016. The Ring is notable for being the first American remake of a Japanese horror classic and for paving the way for many J-Horror remakes to come after the film's success such as The Grudge, Dark Water, Pulse, and One Missed Call. Plot Two teenage girls named Katie Embry (Amber Tamblyn) and Becca Kotler (Rachael Bella) are bored at a sleepover and eventually, they discuss an urban legend that involves a cursed videotape that kills the viewer 7 days after watching it. Katie reveals that she had watched the cursed videotape with her boyfriend and a group of friends last week while staying in a cabin for a vacation but Becca believes she is trying to scare her. Suddenly, the phone rings downstairs, which according to the urban legend, occurs once the viewer has finished watching the cursed videotape, which frighten both teenagers. However, it turns out to be Katie's mother (Lindsay Frost) and Becca returns upstairs with annoyance. Several supernatural occurrences, such as a TV turning on by itself, occur and Katie escapes upstairs out of paranoia. She sees water leaking from her bedroom door and as soon as she opens it, an image of a well is seen on her TV as an unseen force rushes up to her, which causes Katie to scream and distort her face and body in the process and ultimately die of a heart attack. Three days later, a troubled journalist named Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) picks up her son Aidan (David Dorfman) after school, where his concerned teacher tells her that he had been drawing disturbing sketches of his cousin Katie's death a week prior to her actual death. At Katie's funeral, Rachel discovers that the three friends Katie watched the tape with all died at the same time as she did, and visits the campsite where she finds the cursed videotape. Rachel watches it in the cabin where Katie and her friends stayed, and receives a phone call; a little girl on the line whispers “seven days” to Rachel before hanging up. Now cursed, Rachel enlists the help of Noah (Martin Henderson), her ex-boyfriend and Aidan’s father. Noah is a video analyst, but is skeptical of the video’s alleged curse when he watches it. Afterwards, Rachel visits a traumatised Becca who has been admitted into a mental hospital after witnessing Katie's death; she states that "she" will show Rachel the truth, and that Rachel has four days left to live. Rachel investigates the video’s imagery, discovering footage of a lighthouse hidden on the video feed. Researching the lighthouse reveals the identity of a woman seen in the video as Anna Morgan (Shannon Cochran), a horse rancher living on Moesko Island. A strange phenomenon led to all of her horses drowning and she eventually committed suicide by jumping off a cliff. Rachel starts to see hallucinations and finds herself haunted by a strange girl with long black hair covering her face. She then discovers Aidan has watched the tape, and Noah is experiencing similar phenomena to her. After leaving Aidan at her sister’s house, Rachel boards a ferry to Moesko Island while Noah ventures to Eola Psychiatric County Hospital to look up information on Anna’s time there. Both individually discover that Anna had an adopted daughter named Samara (Daveigh Chase), an eight-year-old girl who possessed the ability of thoughtography, which she herself couldn't control which eventually led her foster parents to the brink of insanity. Rachel learns that Samara was responsible for the horse drownings after driving them insane, while Noah discovers that Samara was sent to the same place as her mother and underwent sessions until her father, Richard (Brian Cox), stopped them and locked her in the family ranch’s barn. Confronting Richard about Samara’s location, he realises that the repercussions of Samara's presence around him has occurred again and eventually he commits suicide in a bath tub in front of Rachel, horrifying her. Noah arrives and the two break into the barn, but only find a burnt image of a tree in the loft – the tree at Shelter Mountain. Rachel and Noah travel to the camp, and discover a stone well beneath the cabin floor. Rachel falls down the well and finds Samara’s corpse in the water, experiencing a flashback which reveals that Anna threw Samara down the well, where she survived for seven days. Returning home, Rachel learns from Aidan that she wasn’t supposed to help Samara since she never sleeps. Meanwhile, at Noah's apartment, the television switches on by itself on static which startles him but he eventually turns it off. Suddenly, an image of a well appears on the screen as Rachel tries to call Noah, after realizing he was the next one to die. Samara crawls out of the well and walks towards the screen as water leaks out from the television. She eventually emerges out from the screen and crawls towards Noah. As Noah tries to run away, Samara teleports next to him and he falls back onto a cupboard. Crawling away from Samara as he leaves blood on the floor, Samara reveals her true distorted face directly towards Noah, which frightens him to death. Rachel realises that she has arrived too late as she discovers Noah's distorted corpse upon entering his apartment. Returning home, she angrily destroys the original cursed videotape and burns it in a fireplace. Then, she gazes on the copy of the cursed videotape she made and soon realises that she was spared because she had copied the cursed videotape and sent it to someone else before the 7 day deadline. Rachel also receives flashbacks from her encounter with Richard who told her that "his wife wasn't supposed to have a child" and realises that Samara was truly evil all along. She decides to save Aidan from being killed by Samara by copying the copy of the cursed videotape. Aidan then asks her who she will send the cursed videotape to. Rachel doesn't respond as the film ends with a quick slideshow of every image in the cursed videotape, followed by static. Cast *Naomi Watts as Rachel Keller *Martin Henderson as Noah Clay *David Dorfman as Aidan Keller *Brian Cox as Richard Morgan *Jane Alexander as Dr. Grasnik *Lindsay Frost as Ruth Embry *Amber Tamblyn as Katherine "Katie" Embry *Rachael Bella as Rebecca "Becca" Kotler *Daveigh Chase as Samara Morgan *Shannon Cochran as Anna Morgan *Richard Lineback as Innkeeper *Pauley Perrette as Beth *Sara Rue as Babysitter *Sasha Barrese as Teen Girl *Adam Brody as Kellen (Teen #3) External links * Category:Films Category:2002 release Category:Horror Films Category:Ring series